James Cameron Addresses ‘Avatar’ Rumors

James Cameron confirmed that the fourth movie in the Avatar franchise will be a prequel.

Earlier this week, producer Jon Landau claimed that there were only two more Avatar sequels in the works, with the next two installments being shot back-to-back. However, from his comments in an interview with MTV, Cameron is still going ahead with his plans for the fourth film. Cameron admits that he “hasn’t put pen to paper” on the prequel script, but it would follow an early expedition of Pandora and what caused the conflicts between humans and Na’vi.

“Because when we drop in, even in the first film in ‘Avatar 1,’ as it will be known in the future, we’re dropping into a process that’s 35 years in to a whole colonization,” Cameron explained. He does not want his plan to make a prequel to be viewed as “imitating Star Wars” and feels the prequel is needed to finish “the thematic arc by the end of three.”

Interestingly, Cameron also noted that the two sequels will be written as one large script and later split into two movies. Fox is planning to release the sequels in December 2014 and December 2015.